The Lady of Winterfell
by Aurora-Borealis Coyote
Summary: You're not a ghost, you didn't lose yourself too, you're still there, but they see you. And ghosts need someone to haunt. (based off the theory that Jeyne is ultimately installed as the Lady of Winterfell.)


You never sit on the high seat of Winterfell. Sometimes you wonder what you'd look like on it, sometimes you wonder how long it will be before you can leave it behind- not that you know where you'd go to, or when you'd have to, but winter doesn't last forever and someone's going to come to claim this place, and maybe, you think to yourself, just maybe this isn't what you would cling to for good.

But you're the Lady of Winterfell and you can stay where you like in the rooms, the rooms where you would explore through happily as if you would discover a city of gold inside the bricks, where you'd watch the little direwolves roll and you didn't even mind you didn't have one to mirror you, no, looking back you didn't truly mind much of anything at all.

And you're kind, you promised them in what few words you could bring yourself to say you'd be gentle and you are, and there are problems in this war (but the North is so close to the wall and there are people there who handle things in this war, it's better, it's better than what could be.) They like you, the people, and sometimes you smile faintly because of what you hear from them, because the North is cold but some of the people are kind, really. You try to make sure you'll be kind forever, that you'll never be completely frozen.

For your clothes you don't use any of the leftover garments from Sansa, and you're grateful all of the clothes from your marriage are more things you'll never have to see again, you wear black, like winter, plain and powerful in its own silent way- maybe you're not powerful at all. Or maybe for a few flickers you were powerful enough to stop fate and life from taking all of you, maybe that's the thing about being a faceless steward's girl who can be utilized as easy as left to die. Or maybe there's nothing to it at all. _Soon,_ you tell yourself, when you feel your incomplete nose, when you feel the scrape of your clothes' fabric against the scars on your back, _soon they'll run out of steward's daughters like me and soon winter will come for all of them, and I'll still be here because it was always meant to be winter for me ,was it? _ Because you froze and it didn't break all of you and you're still here and every day it gets colder and colder and so do you, in a way.

Every day you cry less. Your thin fingers work through your hair to distract yourself, no, to give you something to do. But you just end up simply styling it anyway because the elegant ones you learned in King's Landing, back when you thought you could make the whole world beautiful if you wanted it to be, they just remind you in all the wrong ways and if you're just going to remember anyways you at least want it to not hurt as much- it always hurts. You can get used to it. When all you have left is yourself that's what you hold onto and you hold on so hard it's worth the pain. Not that you get anything more but you can't stand the thought of losing yourself, not after everyone else. The first name they gave you was when you were in the brothel and you told yourself that one day they wouldn't want you anymore, you weren't exciting or beautiful like the girls who worked there; and then you were Arya and you told yourself that they thought you were dead too and soon, soon, Arya would come back somehow (any man who wanted to kill her would have to catch her, go through her sword, and if you knew anything about the girl who was more wolf than lady you knew she'd be a match for anyone who challenged her. She'd find a way.), but she never did, and then you were Lady Bolton but you weren't, and Arya Bolton is a blur in all-to-recent history and _she, _the idea of herwas the wife of Ramsay Bolton (it's just his name, you don't fear his name, though you fear everything else about him. A name is important. And soon you'll be a widow and maybe that's the only good thing about losing everyone, because that's what you do) , but _you _aren't.

You're alone most of the time, not making deals or having feasts or commanding handmaids. Alone is safer. There is no safety, but you know that. You've known for so long- that's where your tears came from. You couldn't be a free, careless, pretty little star of a girl, you had to find out what people do when lives and deaths are games, and then you knew. You learned to see expressions and hear words and tones deeper than you were expected and it _hurt,_ but it does less now if you accustom yourself. You see the past when no one else does because no one remembers or would want to or can. But there are worse things, there are always worse things. And then there are memories that are neither great nor awful. It can't be said in words.

When you look around every corner in Winterfell you see a thousand years' worth of the same memory from different angles and it's you, it's you who is the keeper for now, as long as you are the Lady of Winterfell, and longer. Maybe it's fitting, the steward keeps the household and so his daughter keeps it after it falls and is put back together less than halfway. Maybe it's not fitting at all but you still need to do something with it. No one really knows, they just want and all you have to want is gone. For all everyone knows, you're just a forgotten dead girl, a ghost with no one to remember her by. Except the ones you lost. The Starks, you know their names, each and every one of the family that you once knew, they all drifted away until nothing could reach them, even their killers. But you remember them as they were. Someone has to, and maybe that's why you're alive still, one of the reasons, because every ghost needs someone to haunt.

_Sansa._ You used to tell yourself if you ran from the brothel you'd find her in no time and then the two of you could find a way, somehow, go back to the north in disguise, but she was lost too (and they caught you anyway). Not dead, a part of you knows. The South would sing if that were true but there are no true songs and when she returns you'll wait and until then you'll look and see the spaces where the two of you used to fill. _Arya. _The space wants you to see her too, see her with her sword – her needle- and her long face, sharp and older now, she must be, but you know her as a child (none of you are children anymore, you're shadows) and maybe one day she'll return and you'd gladly give the north to her, she'd know what to do with it, but her remnants don't, and you have as much to fight for as she does, would, should have, but you have brown eyes and hers are gray as the winter sky that looks down over you and never comes close. _Robb,_ the king who you once tried to make yourself believe would come south and take and take and take until even you couldn't lose anymore, but a part of you ever since the night of the massacre, a part of you knew that he was made to vanish as hard and final as you were made to vanish inconclusively. The boys and the Lord and Lady Stark are gone as the rest of them, as the steward's daughter is, because she's gone but Jeyne's here, she just can't call out too loudly yet and no one calls your name when anyone can hear. You remember them all. _Squirrel, _you wore her clothes as you ran and ran and life is running even when you are in one place. _Ramsay,_ you hate and hate and hate until it all cancels itself out and if you're trapped in the twisted Arya forever you may be as free of him as you can. _Holly, _the spearwife who truly died for you and the first time you saw death you wept but when death saw you you stared it down because you'd seen life by then and for a moment you thought you were afraid of dying and living in the Dreadfort but you didn't fear dying free near so much. _Theon,_ you were never wolves but you knew each other and maybe that was all you needed, maybe you came too late but it was better than nothing, and you still can't fly but maybe once you did-even though he protected you maybe it was the first time you could protect someone as well and no one took your names then. _Vayon,_ father, you never saw his head but you knew, you wondered what if you died back with him? But all your wondering never brought him back, none of him, except the name he gave you and even then only a little.

There are so many names you have, just one that's yours- you lost everyone and they lost themselves, but you never did, you're still there where you're supposed to but in all the wrong ways. What's a ghost? Not the dead come to life, no, in the songs but not in reality; a ghost is just a memory that can't be killed entirely. You lose everyone. You're used to it. And you see how cold and hardened and weary your once-pretty eyes have become and you almost see a piece of their old glimmer when you look in the mirror; and you look out the window and no one is outside at all; and you don't pray to any of the seven anymore; and you know Jeyne is just a common name for every other girl but it can't be yours to use right now; (and the scars on your back, you want to say they made you strong, but they're just scars, just more pain and you can take so much of it that maybe it doesn't even make much of a difference either way anymore) and you can't fly away right now; and sometimes the wind almost says _Jeyne_ or a girl in sad old Winterfell smiles bright and plain or you close your eyes and nothing new is there and you feel a cold wet sharpness in your eyes but the time has come for it to harden before it freezes on you.

There are ghosts in Winterfell, and they know your name as well as you do, and it's pain and gradual strengthening that's even more painful than suffering, and it keeps you surviving and it's all you have anymore.


End file.
